Hilton Armstrong On Defending Chris Paul

Hilton Armstrong spent his first three-plus seasons playing with the New Orleans Hornets and Chris Paul. So naturally, his brain would be a good one to pick heading into tonight’s matchup between the Wizards and Hornets. Here are his responses on a couple issues we discussed:

On defending Chris Paul and the pick-and-roll:

“The guard needs to try to stay attached to him, which is obviously very hard to do … because easier said that done. But just try and stay up to him. When the pick comes, jump up, and the big has to be aggressive. You can’t just lay back and wait for him to come for you. You need to shrink the court on him and try to make him uncomfortable, and try and get the ball out of his hands. He likes to control the game, control the ball. If we get the ball out of his hand early and have weakside there stunting on for everybody, and if need be, have a full rotation, or whatever. But as long as the ball is out of his hands, we’ll be pretty good.”

On Paul’s tendencies that they want to keep him from doing:

“He loves to attack the big. Any situation, if there’s a big there, he’s going to try and attack him, try to get the big on his heels. If he’s on the wing, and he likes to come off the screen and cross over to the middle to he can see the full floor. Somebody is going to have to pick him up from there. Once he gets past the big, somebody’s going to have to pick him up, and they’re going to be open … the next man’s going to be open. Whoever’s helping, if they don’t step up, he’s got that little floater or jump shot. He’s a very intelligent point guard. He knows how to break a team down whether it’s passing or shooting.”

Addressing the physicality of the Indiana Pacers in the last game and how the Wizards come out of that trying to be more physical:

“Not just from yesterday, but … I put that on the bigs. The bigs have to be more aggressive, be more physical. Just hitting people and don’t let any easy layups come in there, uncontested shots … and just, you have to hit people. You know, a while ago they were saying our bigs are soft. I don’t know if they’re still saying that or not, but we have to get that reputation out of there because the guys on this team have heart.”

Kyle founded TAI in 2007 and has been weaving in and out the world of Wizards ever since, ducking WittmanFaces, jumping over G-Wiz, and avoiding stints on the DNP-Conditioning list. He has covered the Washington pro basketball team as a member of the media since 2009. Kyle lives in D.C. with his wife, loves basketball, and has no pets.

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